What a week.

I'm sure that I feel like most everyone this week, just thankful to be alive and healthy. The footage from Joplin is overwhelming and heartbreaking. I am so glad I have a basement! To borrow from my favorite podcast to listen to (NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour)"here is what is making me happy this week:"

The kids are home with me for the summer. In order not to drive each other crazy, we have created at-home preschool. We have some theme weeks planned out and some field trips. Luckily, I am a book hoarder and I have at least one if not multiple books to go with our various themes, and we are looking forward to our trips to the library. We also have a 500 Books of Summer goal and are working on a big poster to fill in with stickers. It sounds like a lot, but I know we can do it. The kids love to read and we are turning off the TV this summer, trying to limit 1 cartoon or movie per day.

This week has been Tree week. We have been outside playing Explorer Extrodinaire (Fancy Nancy book) doing bark rubbings and taking notes on our clip board. We found some fun stuff including hundreds of cicadas which are so loud in the woods behind our house. Good stuff. We have learned about bark and leaves and all the animals that take up residence in trees from the backyard to the rainforest. The kids are so smart, they soak this stuff right up. On Thursday, we are meeting friends at the Botanical Gardens where they are having an Extreme Treehouse exhibit. The treehouses vary in design and materials and the kids can play in them. There is also a Great St. Louis Tree Hunt going on where you can use GPS to locate 15 of 30 different trees in the area, fill out a journal, and turn in to get a prize. We are really excited about this. Our whole little nerd family. :)

We took Debbie, Matt's processor of 4 years, her baby blanket to a small baby shower at work. I included a picture. She is a wonderful mom of 4 (almost) and we are excited to meet her new little guy. Anybody who can work with Matt that closely for 4 years and still like him is a special person. Debbie is so devoted and does an amazing job. My life is easier because she handles things so well. Matt is spoiled!

Also including some pictures of the kids playing in the backyard and Yadi-Grandma's dog. The playset looks terrible because Matt killed all the weeds this weekend, so don't mind that it looks like the kids are in the desert. We actually have a very lush, green yard, just not in that one spot.